


Changeover

by Leyenn



Series: The Firing Line [1]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:23:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A change of command.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changeover

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for _The Gathering_: pre-ep for _Midnight On The Firing Line_.

She got the orders yesterday.

Today she's on a transport, shipping out. Never let it be said Earthforce is anything slower than lightning when they're embarrassed. It just figures, this, the one time in years she broke the regs - not counting the coffee plantation. She doesn't really, honestly think they busted her ass off the one duty worth having in her career for a bunch of seedlings, so it must be the other thing.

Kosh.

Sinclair.

Ben.

Lyta.

It's all over, of course. Officially. Red-taped, institutionally-stamped, case closed and filed in some deep, dank drawer somewhere in a locked room that might any time now suffer an accidental decompression, or a fire-suppression failure, and damn, that would be a shame. A damn shame.

Hyperspace is whirling outside the window. It makes her feel slightly sick, reminds her of the station rotating while she looked out on a fixed starfield outside. She wonders if it would have become a companion, that feeling, given long enough; like sometimes when she'd lie down on Mars in her barracks and everything about her life would be so _heavy_ that she'd swear she could feel the ground spinning beneath her. It's cold comfort to wonder if she could have learnt to live with it again.

She left a note for whoever comes after her - it's not as if they were inclined to tell her who it will be, and although Jeff gave her a name (_'Ivanova. A Lieutenant Commander. I'm sure she'll be... adequate. Compared to you.'_) - well, a name means nothing out here. She's not even sure where it is she's going, except that it's probably far, far away from any life she wants to have.

So she left the note, wishing whoever all the best, and the hydroponics grid number of her plantation. Someone may as well get some use out of them, and she doubts Garibaldi would be interested.

  


*

  


She got her orders yesterday. Not the shipping-out notice, printed quickly on a flimsy sheet and dropped into her inbox one morning three weeks ago: the official order, red-stamped and Presidentially-sealed in a diplomatic pouch handed to her by the closest Lieutenant on the shuttle pad with unspoken orders to memorise and frame. _Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova, Second In Command, Babylon 5._

She wasn't expecting it. Damn, she wasn't expecting anything that would get her off Earth any time soon. Not that she hasn't been waiting for it, for something, anyhow. Even knowing there are so many people better qualified and better connected, you never know.

She didn't realise until the jump and the red swirls of hyperspace, still there and comforting outside her window, what a weight it is to be off-world. Waking up is a chore she'd almost forgotten, when it's all black outside, but other than that...

It's good to be out here, away from it all. Away from them.

Mama.

Ganya.

Malcolm.

There's her father left, of course, but she thinks sometimes it would be easier if - well, if. She never gets further than that. For everything, she still tries to be a daughter he might one day be proud of.

In hoping he might be proud of this posting, she should really have known better.

The currents of space reflect in the window; a day from here, and still two days from there, she wants it to be done and to be there. It's the quickest she's ever got a post, and the furthest place she could imagine; but she can, if she tries as she watches her life float away behind, imagine waking up in the pitch black a week from now and calling it home.

The furthest, the newest, by all accounts the craziest posting she's ever known. She can't wait.

And the little part of her that won't be left behind just hopes it will be far enough.

  


*

  



End file.
